


"There's blood on your hands."

by Anonymous



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Blood, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 00:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11093400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Harry has been in love with his roommate for approximately six months and seventeen days. Before then he had a crush on the barista that works in his favourite off-campus coffee shop for four months and eleven days. They’re both the same person.





	"There's blood on your hands."

Harry has been in love with his roommate for approximately six months and seventeen days. Before then he had a crush on the barista that works in his favourite off-campus coffee shop for four months and eleven days. They’re both the same person, and aside from the intensity of Harry’s pining and the number of traits that he has discovered and grown attached to, their relationship has remained oddly unchanged. A glacier moving through the lapses of getting comfortable with each other over a counter four times a week, making minimal progress as the months have passed and they’ve passed each other by daily in hallway and living room; in kitchen and upon sofa cushions that cheer along with them when they come together for Sunday night football catch-up every week.

Niall is a friend. Someone Harry has depended on since the friendly sidenotes along with his tea turned into frequent talks about life during dull afternoons without caffeine addicts breathing down Harry’s neck in line behind him. He’s also a vital part, now. Feels like a tiny bone that no one knows the name of but that still keeps an entire skeleton together. Harry can feel it when he walks. Talks. Sits still. Knows the name of it the same way he knows that the things protecting his heart from splintering entirely are called ribs.

Ribs and Niall and him. It’s all longing. It’s all him being in love.

“You’re a dick,” Harry concludes. “You’re supposed to be helping me.”

His beer is unaffected in its bottle, showing its indifference regarding Harry’s love life through froth and a barely-there crackling of bubbles in the kitchen. Dimly lit, with white cupboards lining up in a march of inanimate objects against human pining. His appliances used to be far more concerned before Niall moved in and charmed them, too.

“Harry?” the flat asks. The silence interrupted by Niall’s voice; the cadence of it warm and slow, familiar and encompassing. Something soft and full to keep the noises of Harry’s mind from echoing in-between walls.

Niall’s slim, but muscular. Feet that stay on the ground whenever his head’s in the clouds; ankles chained by kindness that he refuses to kick off and away no matter the situations he’s been in that might have required it. His calves and thighs are pale, inviting where they run up to boxer-covered hips. Faint outlines of abs and ribs. Chest hair and stubble. Concern in winter-blue eyes when they cut through the room and find Harry in the early hour.

“Talking to yourself again?” he adds on, voice torn up by sleep. “What’re you doing?”

“Went to the bathroom,” Harry explains. “Accidentally started drinking.”

Niall falters in a lot of ways; his knee bending slightly under the weight of surprise that lands upon him; his eyes trembling with the added concern; his lips cracking open under a smile, a snort of astonished amusement.

“Accidentally?” he repeats. “Without me?”

“Didn’t want to wake you up.”

Niall looks at him for a moment, seems to be searching for something, debating something else, before saying, “You can always wake me up.”

Harry breathes, in and out. Leans, back and forward, grabbing a bottle from the fridge behind him before he’s settling back on his stool, back at their breakfast bar. He offers the beer and a bad smile – wishes he were better so that Niall could want him back like that.

“Don’t say that,” he warns, with self-deprecation lining his skin, a fresh dose misted in his senses since midnight. “I might believe you. Take you up on that offer.”

Niall cracks the beer cap off against the counter, says, “Do. Is something bothering you?”

“What? No,” Harry denies, in that way that always makes his mum roll her eyes. “Just tired. Miss my mum.”

“Use the nights for sleeping, then,” Niall suggests, laughter in voice and gaze. “It’d make both your mum and I happy, I’m sure.”

“She’d like you.”

Niall’s merriment constricts – becomes something quiet and private where he smiles over the bar. Winter skies sparkling with joyous wonder. “She would?”

As though it’s important. As though the judgement of Harry’s mother matters. As though Niall doesn’t charm absolutely everything that crosses his path, kitchen surfaces included. The Styles-gene has already proven weaker than most to his smile, his kindness.

“I like hedgehogs,” Harry says, because he’s had three beers already, and because he does.

“We’re not getting a hedgehog,” Niall tells him, because he’s only taken a sip from his bottle, yet, and because he has no idea how domestic that sounded; how it squeezed Harry’s heart for a number of reasons. “Maybe a miniature pig…”

Harry blinks through the disbelief – lets it wash over his tongue. “How’s that any better?”

“Not _better_ ,” Niall ponders, grinning through it all. “Just think we have enough habitants curling up in balls when they’re distressed in this household as it is, is all.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in – takes more blinking during a stretched out moment of silence where few things register but the way Niall’s tilted his head and smile and has it all aimed at Harry’s confusion, looking fond. It’s something vulnerable, but maybe that’s just him, _Harry_ , inebriated and in love with the man and his attention.

“I don’t _curl!_ ” he splutters when words fall into place. “I’m too lanky to curl.”

“You curl,” Niall decides. “And pout, too. It’s cute.”

It’s not surprising, not really, that Niall’s noticed Harry’s contemplative nature. Niall is attentive towards his surroundings, he knows his customers at the coffee shop and he cares wholeheartedly about his friends and Harry falls somewhere in-between those two categories now – is his own island in this flat that they share where Niall gets to see the brooding artist with his coffee cup _and_ the vulnerable twenty-one year old with his beer bottle.

Niall’s seen it all, heard some of it, and gotten in on secrets that Harry usually keeps stored away in dark corners of his mind or upon canvases that never make it to his teacher’s desk for assessment. Niall has gotten pieces and he’s cared for them with warmth and patience, and now he’s stood in their kitchen at three in the morning, drinking beer with Harry’s petulance without any signs of thinking that it’s a waste of his time.

“Hedgehogs curl,” Harry ponders. Concludes. Safe territory, animals. He sips his beer; lets bitterness wash over his tongue, swirling his thoughts.

“I just mentioned that, you see,” Niall muses. Is _amused_ – eyes bright but warm, countering their own cold hues because the kindness within Niall can melt through ice bergs and gazes all the same. Can move glaciers. Can move _them_. “Aren’t you listening?”

He’s leaning in over Harry’s barricade, fogging up necks of bottles with his questioning breath and tearing down Harry’s defences. Enchanting to look at like this, still sleep-warm and tousled where he aims all his attention so earnestly.

Harry watches the curve of Niall’s upper lip, the bow, the lines up to his nose and the bridge up to those eyes. Finds curiosity and trust in them – a smile directed at him that has little to do with his mouth because it just shines, there, blue and inviting. A moment frozen in alcohol and wonder, and Harry wonders how badly he’s projecting. Thinks he could kiss Niall right now if he was just another beer deep in this lake of devotion.

He turns his head to the side, dips his chin down and his gaze towards his beer. It’s still not helping; isn’t even showing signs of life through bubbles or froth anymore, and Harry realizes belatedly that he’s drunk it all up.

“I listen,” he tells it. Feels upset, suddenly, that he didn’t notice it disappearing, that he didn’t hear that loss. Guilt itching beneath his skin, telling him he shouldn’t have looked away and shielded himself like that from someone so kind, so ready with smile and concern to help him.

Niall sighs. Sounds... tired, all of a sudden, in a way three in the morning hasn’t affected him before. His eyes are wistful when Harry finally looks up at him; have entered a new emotion while Harry’s looked away, and it feels like missing a decade. A scene in a Shakespeare play. The penalties in a Champions League game. Someone lost, and he thinks it may be him, thinks his lungs lost air that should have kept him afloat.

“You don’t,” Niall’s revealing to the room, now, a bit breathless, too. Defeated. “You’d go to bed right now if you did. Sleep and stop me worrying.”

He’s pushing himself away from the bar, then, taking the one sip of beer with him and leaving the rest of the bottle among a battlefield of Harry’s fallen ones. His skin’s silvery in the dim light, soft-looking and enticing as bone and muscle move beneath to take him away.

Harry looks after him, bereft. Listens as the sound of the faucet starts up in the bathroom, distinguishes the slice of light coming out from there to take a bite at the living room’s darkness. The guilt’s growing, now, along with the beer in his stomach. Acid and alcohol and guilt, along with a hopelessness at the realization that all his care has been locked up so tightly near his bones that too little of it has shown. That Niall’s been left outside, thinking Harry doesn’t listen.

He toes his way out there, in there, into living room and against door frame where he can see Niall brushing his teeth; where he can lean in and down and swallow tightly and whisper, “I _do_.”

Niall startles, from toe to head but more importantly to elbow – one that shoots backwards and catches the side of Harry’s nose with its surprise. Shares it like a violent kiss of a shocked love affair. Harry’s hissing, staggering backwards from the impact until he’s crashing against the back of their sofa, sitting down on the top of it, on those cushions.

The movements make his hands shake – make them disturb the nose and its throbbing, the wetness that is already dripping out of it. His hands are warm and confused, uncertain of where to be, what to cradle. Niall's expression is heart-breaking.

“ _No_ ,” he’s saying. Wide-eyed. Horrified. That blue should never be broken like that. “God fucking _no_ – did _I_ – no, _please_ – I’m so sorry, Harry, I’m so _sorry_.”

Harry grunts. Moans when the mere movement of his upper lip makes the throbbing ten times worse, when his thumb brushing against the side of his nose is worse than the actual punch. He tries to collect his tongue under all that pain, tries to find it and the words he needs to say to draw the storm clouds away from Niall’s face and make it shine at him again, but it’s too hard. Too little room for a broken voice when Niall’s going on.

“I didn’t know you were there, I didn’t _see_ you, I – fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , we need ice, right?” he’s rambling, hands in horrified hair. “We have _don’t get up_ to get you ice. Or peas? Do we have frozen peas?”

Harry tilts his head back further – his weight back against the back of the couch. He blinks. Tries to convince the ceiling and Niall that he never tried to move, to help Niall help him. The entire apartment rolls figurative eyes at him, at his infatuated heart.

Niall’s muttering on. Is in the kitchen, now, soundly digging through the boxes in their freezer while cursing himself without mercy. It makes Harry’s heart break, a little. Makes the guilt thrive in belly and bones and blood, inside veins and between trembling fingers that desperately try to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Why don’t we have any frozen peas?”

“You don’t like them.”

The frantic scrambling stops; all sound ceases but the faint wheeze from Harry’s nose, blood clogging nostrils, wet warmth spreading.

“You remember that?”

Harry swallows. Winces at the taste, the reminder of what’s happening. Explains, louder this time, “I do listen to you.”

Niall shows up in the doorway, Harry can see it from the corner of an eye. His eyes are as wide, still, but a bit less fractured by emotions. Mostly just made up of a play of two of them, now, where guilt is battling something that Harry can’t define. It feels nice upon his skin, along with the concern that lines Niall’s hands when they’re finally close enough to be touching him again. Caring and gentle where they move Harry’s hands in order to explore for themselves.

“We need to,” Harry murmurs into the sliver of space between them, “keep pressure on it.”

He moves his fingers around Niall’s; arranges two of them to resume that pinch of the bridge of his nose while they keep eye contact just above. Blue and green and emotions. Messy fireworks over a messy carpet.

He doesn’t let it become another lingering moment like the one in the kitchen; interrupts it as soon as he sees another bout of apologies edge its way up in Niall’s gaze by saying, “There’s blood on your hands.”

Niall’s eyebrows twitch along with his mouth in surprise, amusement trying to find its way back to his expression without his permission as though Harry’s random outbursts always are the keys to make him relax, to assure him.

“There’s blood on your _face_ ,” he shoots back, before the very words and their truth reel him right back into the frantic state. “Your _face_ – oh my god, your face. Your beautiful – I hurt your – I _hurt_ you.”

 _Your beautiful—?_ “What?”

But Niall’s not listening; is tugging gently at Harry’s hands to get them back into the bathroom, running water and moving those careful, careful fingers over Harry’s skin to brush the blood away while saying the same worried lines on repeat, muttering about a beauty that Harry only knows to be Niall’s own.

Harry catches his wrist. Catches his breath. His voice. Lets silence ebb around them while his own nose tries to contain the next drop of blood in solidarity. “You think _I’m_ beautiful?”

Niall blinks. “Yes?”

The wrist escapes. Harry’s hand trembles on; comes up to wipe at that sensitive nose and its drying blood. “Don’t tease me.”

 “The entire _world_ thinks you're beautiful,” Niall grumbles back, reaching for a paper towel, two, to press gently to Harry’s nose. “It’s not a joke.”

He’s pinching the bridge of it once more, then, looking wistful over paper towels and trembling hands as he shakes his head and the faintest of smiles on his lips. Another hand brings comfort to Harry’s side, then, guiding them out again. To the sofa, where Harry’s eased down with his head on Niall’s lap.

Niall grins, after a moment. Smiles that private smile down at him while his fingers move against Harry’s temples. “You’re curling up right now. Told you you do.”

“Told you I listen,” Harry counters. Reminds. “I listen to you. My mum would like you. She’d _love_ you.”

“ _I_ love _you_.”

The world freezes. Niall’s eyes are splinters of their former selves, caught up in emotions that have torn them apart once more and left them in a state of absolute fear, now. His lips are parted; the words already out there, hitting the centre of Harry’s chest.

Harry blinks through it, through the fall of paper out of a startled and slack hand, through leaps and bounds of a heart hearing the impossible and weighing it up, _believing it_.

“But I – for so long,” he splutters. Swallows. Let’s himself say, “I love you.”

“I _hurt_ you.”

“But you love me,” Harry reminds him.

Niall says, “I do.”

“I’ll be fine,” Harry says, to Niall and to himself. To the kitchen cupboards and the empty beer bottles. “I love you.”


End file.
